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It is my pleasure to announce that our public playtest for the D&D Next project will commence on May 24th. The playtest is the single most important part of the D&D Next process. D&D is a game that has spanned 38 years of gaming, spawned countless campaigns, and launched an entire gaming genre.

It gets attention, sure. Seems to kind of undermine the whole unification song and dance though. "We want all D&D gamers united under one edition, so we're going to shotgun blast releases of the old editions until then."

a) 5e will be so awesome that everyone's old edition books will be totally reusable so let's get them in the hands of people and buying product again!
b) We just rereleased everyone's favorite edition and now a ton of people are pretty happy regardless of 5e!

My money's on b) happening, though to be fair either option gets WotC some bank.

Edit: I just had a thought. These are "with Errata". What if the "errata" is just them snatching OGL content from Paizo? This came up earlier in the thread, but it could be a thing with this development.

Edit: I just had a thought. These are "with Errata". What if the "errata" is just them snatching OGL content from Paizo? This came up earlier in the thread, but it could be a thing with this development.

That seems unlikely because it'd be a shot across the bow to Paizo, and the last thing WotC needs is a more invigorated Paizo (or Paizo fanbase), but I'd find it hilarious.

Last week I decided that I would leave my contract position with Wizards of the Coast. I am no longer working on Dungeons & Dragons, although I may provide occasional consultation in the future. My decision is one based on differences of opinion with the company. However, I want to take this time to stress that my differences were not with my fellow designers, Rob Schwalb and Bruce Cordell. I enjoyed every moment of working with them over the past year. I have faith that they'll create a fun game. I'm rooting for them.

Due to my non-disclosure agreement, as well as a desire to keep things on a professional level, I have no intention of going into further detail at this time. (Mostly, I just hate drama, and would rather talk about more interesting things.)

As for what I'll be turning to next, I hope you'll stay tuned. I plan on having an interesting announcement in that regard in the near future.

7

Unexpected, but most likely good news based on what he's been posting.

Edit: I just had a thought. These are "with Errata". What if the "errata" is just them snatching OGL content from Paizo? This came up earlier in the thread, but it could be a thing with this development.

That seems unlikely because it'd be a shot across the bow to Paizo, and the last thing WotC needs is a more invigorated Paizo (or Paizo fanbase), but I'd find it hilarious.

Turns out 4E was just a ploy by WotC to get Paizo to make a 3.75 for them.

Yes, Wizards, you should listen to the 5~ people offering this criticism. That will be a good business decision.

I'd like to know what Wizards are doing to ensure that the vocal minority doesn't have their way at the expense of everyone else.

3D Virtual Tabletop - see the dungeon the way your character sees it. Move your miniature forward to discover what lies in the darkness beyond your torchlight. You can try a live demo online right now.

I'm just going to play the Iron Kingdoms RPG when it comes out this summer and not have any fucks left to give.

This is what most of the folks at my FLGS seem to be planning to do.

It makes me sad because we had a pretty decent pair of weekly Encounters groups until the Encounters seasons started getting extra horrible and everything WotC said made everyone sad.

What did WotC do to Encounters? I've never been to one but it sounded like it was one of their few things that was successful.

I DM 4e for three groups (ostensibly four, but we haven't met in like a year) and all my players' opinions more or less fall into the set of ("4e is great","I hate the edition treadmill, goddamn","I haven't finished exploring 4e's space yet","whatever") so I don't see myself switching editions any time soon.

That said I will at least read the playtest. At this point I don't know if any of the DMs in my games care enough to try running it. I don't.

I'm just going to play the Iron Kingdoms RPG when it comes out this summer and not have any fucks left to give.

This is what most of the folks at my FLGS seem to be planning to do.

It makes me sad because we had a pretty decent pair of weekly Encounters groups until the Encounters seasons started getting extra horrible and everything WotC said made everyone sad.

What did WotC do to Encounters? I've never been to one but it sounded like it was one of their few things that was successful.

I DM 4e for three groups (ostensibly four, but we haven't met in like a year) and all my players' opinions more or less fall into the set of ("4e is great","I hate the edition treadmill, goddamn","I haven't finished exploring 4e's space yet","whatever") so I don't see myself switching editions any time soon.

That said I will at least read the playtest. At this point I don't know if any of the DMs in my games care enough to try running it. I don't.

The writing in the current one and the one before that were especially terrible.

Like, I was asked to run the Feywild one one night. I looked at it. I was so horrified at how stupid it was that I just made shit up instead and said they were having a drunken dream from too much feywine and they all were fighting manifestations of their personal issues.

A major part of the issue is that WotC keeps referencing old adventures. Turns out that the old adventures were terrible.

The writing in the current one and the one before that were especially terrible.

Like, I was asked to run the Feywild one one night. I looked at it. I was so horrified at how stupid it was that I just made shit up instead and said they were having a drunken dream from too much feywine and they all were fighting manifestations of their personal issues.

A major part of the issue is that WotC keeps referencing old adventures. Turns out that the old adventures were terrible.

As an aside, I think one of the most telling contrasts between the old days and now was the 4e conversion of the Tomb of Horrors, which is iconic (to a fault really) and full of shit that just doesn't fly in modern D&D. Whenever the 5e-athon gets heavy in the classics blah blah blah I just think to the sidebar in 4e ToH that basically said "the old module is cool and people remember it fondly but we're also trying to have fun here".

I'm not really familiar with the adventures of yore in any detail (since 2e my DMs (and I) have preferred homebrew over canned adventures) but based on what I know, I can see how playing a lot of them straight would turn into absolute piles of shit.

Healing surges have suffered some criticism, however, in that they feel a little too “game-y” and not grounded enough in the world

Guys, I know this has past, but I can't let it die without jumping on my biggest peeve ever.

So, your 28th level Barbarian, Thundark the Flesh Reaper, Lord of the Horse Lords of the Lorded North is doing battle with the Ancient Undead Hellbeast Wyrmdemon Fangor, attempting to sever one of his nineteen heads with his magical axe Blood Drinker, which literally drinks the blood of his enemies...and you're complaining that "healing surges" are not grounded enough? And there's people at Wizards actually taking these guys seriously?

Remember that fighters aren't allowed to be fantastical because they're freaking muggles.

And so is John McClain. Fucking haters.

Is it because wizards are the asocial nerd loners of fantasy archetypes and fighters are the football jocks that all this bile is spewed? I reckon there's a psych paper in there somewhere….

You'd be surprised how many people still play out high school revenge fantasies via D&D. These are the people that still tell themselves that 'jocks are going to bag their groceries some day despite the fact that they work a job with no required education and the guy who used to shove them into lockers is a stock broker.

So, your 28th level Barbarian, Thundark the Flesh Reaper, Lord of the Horse Lords of the Lorded North is doing battle with the Ancient Undead Hellbeast Wyrmdemon Fangor, attempting to sever one of his nineteen heads with his magical axe Blood Drinker, which literally drinks the blood of his enemies...and you're complaining that "healing surges" are not grounded enough? And there's people at Wizards actually taking these guys seriously?

Holy fucking shit. I quit D&D forever.

I agree entirely with what you're saying, but, and this is just me reading the blog posts to this point, I think the designers of the game also want to reign in Thundark so he's Thundark the Slightly Terrifying. (Unless Thundark took some levels of cleric of course.)

So yeah. Muggles or whatever. The point is that I think they're walking eyes wide open into this one.

And, for some reason, they're also the only people who don't know how this story is going to end:

The neckbeards making these complaints & 'suggestions' are not going to buy D&D Next.

It's like watching the Paramount fail with Snakes on a Plane all over again.

1. A set of people make sets of complaints/suggestions.
2. Another set of people prefer the current set of rules.
3. The sets of complaints/suggestions and current rules are filtered into a set of new rules.
4. The new rules set will turn off a set of people.
5. The turned-off set of people will be a subset of the first two sets.

You have to be really confident in your understanding of all of those variables, or staggeringly stupid, to base your design off of random feedback on what is often mutually exclusive feedback. Or you can just bullshit the entire process and do whatever the fuck you want despite outward appearances. Given I have zero reason to believe WotC understands the market that well, my assumption flips between "staggeringly stupid" and "smoke and mirrors" with respect to the feedback.

Edit: forgot 6. Another subset still will actually bother to purchase the edition.

Sorry, can't get over the healing surges thing...it's just such a basic concept in heroic fantasy that I still can't believe it doesn't make sense to EVERYONE.

The hero gets beat up, he's down on the ground, ready to get his faced kicked it...he reaches deep down inside, finds a little bit of strength, gets up and stabs the shit out of the BBEG. Or the hero is brought to the brink of death in one fight, but survives and in the next chapter or scene, he's back out there kicking ass again.

The problem is hit points are an abstraction. Now healing surges are an abstraction of an abstraction...and people who fail to understand the abstraction of hit points have a total brain failure when it comes to the abstract abstraction of healing surges.

It makes me wonder if the last 15 years of video games has rotted our brains and imaginations so much that the general population of gamers just can't play P&P games anymore. D:

EDIT: Relevant to 5E, I think this means more abstraction and less rules. More imagination, less by-the-book.

Sorry, can't get over the healing surges thing...it's just such a basic concept in heroic fantasy that I still can't believe it doesn't make sense to EVERYONE.

The hero gets beat up, he's down on the ground, ready to get his faced kicked it...he reaches deep down inside, finds a little bit of strength, gets up and stabs the shit out of the BBEG. Or the hero is brought to the brink of death in one fight, but survives and in the next chapter or scene, he's back out there kicking ass again.

The problem is hit points are an abstraction. Now healing surges are an abstraction of an abstraction...and people who fail to understand the abstraction of hit points have a total brain failure when it comes to the abstract abstraction of healing surges.

It makes me wonder if the last 15 years of video games has rotted our brains and imaginations so much that the general population of gamers just can't play P&P games anymore. D:

EDIT: Relevant to 5E, I think this means more abstraction and less rules. More imagination, less by-the-book.

It comes down to nostalgia. Many people just like what they like because they have fond memories of the past. We're all subject to nostalgia, but it shuts the brain down. It's not people not understanding hit points are abstractions, it's back in my day son we modeled the degree of bleeding based on hit points and all the other ways are dumb and wrong because back in my day we played REAL D&D. It's an unassailable point --- those people are just wrong (and to them, you are wrong), and won't change. Catering to them stops progress on the game, because you've stopped thinking about it. You're just rearranging Pavlovian nostalgia treats.

Besides, if video games rotted our brains, by rhetoric 4e would be the best edition because the common complaint is that it's "too much" like a "video game".

It makes me wonder if the last 15 years of video games has rotted our brains and imaginations so much that the general population of gamers just can't play P&P games anymore. D:

Except that the people complaining loudest about healing surges are the grognards who've been playing D&D and nothing but D&D for the last 15+ years.

This too. They tend to be the people that believe all forms of game are lower than D&D, and all forms of literature are lower than LOTR. Playing a video game would do them some good, they might glimpse how clearly game elements can work when they have to be distilled into machine language.

There's actually a theory in business that when you're developing a new product, the worst people to listen to are the current customers.

IIRC, Games Workshop figured that 5% of their customers were buying 50% of their product, and that same 5% were so toxic that listening to their demands during development and marketing would run the risk of driving away a massive segment of the customer base - and unlike the toxic 5%, that larger segment actually played the game, and brought in new customers in the process. And no matter what they did to appeal to the other 95% of players, the 5% would always keep playing and always keep complaining.

More like, the 5% used to buy stuff and now just take up 50% of the complaining while not actually buying into any new products or even playing the game. So, fuck 'em. There's no reason to pay attention to people like that.

Interesting how quickly since Monte left we've changed narrative from "Wizards should be obviously superior and do everything" to "The fighter should be equal to the wizard at high level". I just wonder how they are going to accomplish that without the framework that 4E has built (because 3E failed miserably at it). 4E a fighter is amazing at high levels, because they have enough options and abilities to keep up with any other class in the game. They also have a specific role and don't overshadow everyone else either.

Really what bemuses me is that if the fighter is obviously best at fighting, what will be the point of other melee classes? Are they even going to bother with classes beyond the core 4 or so, but just make them kits or variations? Who really knows and I'm pretty sure they don't either.

On the plus side, the non-rules stuff they talk about is wonderfully clear.

They're... still really bad at getting across a coherent story about the game.

I think what they should be doing is working on a baseline for a variety of concepts, and then apply those concepts to different classes as appropriate. It's going to be horrifying if they're really going to balance combat ability with "exploration" or "roleplay" stuff rather than just making sure every class is useful in every major chunk of game.